Transcription
Are you ready to start playing pickle ball like it's 2026? I'm going to talk to you today about the new age shot that everyone's talking about, and I'm going to help you master that. That special shot is the third shot drip. What is that? Great question. It is a drive drop drip.
So, the third shot options we've grown accustomed to are the drop and the drive. But today's new age player, with the advanced power, the advanced spin, we're able to add a little bit more spin to bring that ball down for an aggressive third shot drop that's going to help us win more points, more matches, and more medals.
All right, let's dive into what is the drip or the roll drop. Maybe you've heard that before. So, instead of hitting a traditional drop shot or a traditional drive, we're gonna hit the new school drip, which, as you can see there, it was a nice combination. It was a little bit more powerful than the drop, but it wasn't so aggressive as the drive that it was still able to get low to our opponent's feet.
All right, let's talk about how to hit this drip now. So, what I like to do is think of ourselves as baseball players, infielders in particular, like we're going to field a ground ball in this wide, low athletic base. You'll hear me say it all the time. I got my new pickle ball course coming out that talks about all of this. Uh, if you want to sign up, give me your email. I'll let you know when that's coming out. We're going to keep in this athletic base here and keep everything in front of us here. So, instead of taking a big back swing, letting that ball get behind us, we want to keep everything in front of us here.
The next thing, and this is the important thing, this is how we're going to generate the top spin on the ball. So, I like to think of this as we're going from 6:00 on the ball to 3:00 on the ball to 12:00. So, we've got a clock here. We're going 6 to 3 to 12. This outside moon shape. So, see how I go from 6 to 3 to 12. I exaggerated that a little bit. I really want you to think about 6 to two. Super easy.
Another way I heard this described by a pickle ball influencer, that pickle ball guy that I really like, is you're picking up a phone to your ear, right? Hello. So that motion of six to two is just as if you took a phone to your ear. Is this how you do it? Is that old school way? I think new school ways like this with the iPhone. So if we think about picking up this phone here, nice and easy.
And what's great about this shot is you can drill this by yourself with just a basket of balls or find a partner over there and hit this over and over again to the point that we're able to repeat this motion and we're able to make 96% of our drops, just like the pros.
All right. When am I going to use this drip, Troy? Sometimes the ball comes really hard, sometimes it comes really short. That's a great question. When you get a short, high return, I want you to smack that. Stay aggressive. But let's say you get a medium return, comes back to the baseline after you hit a good serve, right? Remember, we always want to stay aggressive on the serves. So, we get a ball that's kind of sitting up here, and it's not quite something that we're ready to hit a full swing drive. It's not behind us, but we want to stay aggressive with our drips here, new age pickle ball. So, we're hitting this ball in front of us.
And there are three targets that I like to hit: down the line, down the middle, to the right side's backhand here. Make them talk a little bit, make them communicate, right? Or we're going to pull them really wide to that forehand because that crosscourt is the most room for us. It's the easiest shot for us to hit.
Now, remember, we're not going to hit this ball every single time. Sometimes that ball gets behind us and we need to hit that shovel drop, which I've talked about in a previous video. But if we do hit a good shovel drop, maybe it gets us in position to hit our fifth ball as a drip that we can start to move forward on it as well.
All right. So, now I'm going to give you the benefits of the drip. You've mastered the drip. You make it consistently. Why are we hitting this drip? We're hitting this aggressive third shot so that we can get popups from our opponents here. Your partner is going to love you if you master this drip because that ball with that top spin landing deep into her kitchen over there, she's forced to either just hit a super soft shot into the kitchen, which means we get a free pass up to the kitchen, or it puts a ton of pressure on her that she's going to pop up and we're going to be able to crash on that. So, instead of drive and crash, I want to drip and crash.
So, sometimes what that looks like here is if I hit a good drip, I'm in. Look, look how much pressure that put on her. Look how easy that popup was for me. So with this third shot drip here, we can turn defense into offense immediately. So sometimes the old school drop sat a little bit high and she could just keep keep us back until we finally hit a good one. But I'm kind of just stuck here staying back until I hit this drip that I put a little bit more pressure on her. Make her have to work a little bit harder. Take a step back maybe so that we can get in smoothly up to the kitchen.
Pro tip on getting forward on a drip is shot recognition immediately off your paddle. If I hit a ball too high, she's going to crush that at me and I'm stuck in the transition zone right here. So, if I hit a poor drip, stay back. Try it again on the next shot here. But if I hit a good drip, I need you to get forward immediately on that. It can't be the, "Oh, it's good. Let me come forward. Now I'm stuck in a bad spot again." I need that immediate shot recognition. That's good. I'm coming forward and I can attack that ball. And hopefully you get lucky like that. We just hit a lot of forehand drips.
Same applies on the backhand drip. We can stay aggressive. I want to dip that paddle head and let that left hand do a lot of work here. If you're a two-hander, no problem. If you're a one-hander. If you're a two-hander, we're going to go from six to 9 to 12. This time, I really want to curve that outside of that ball. So, we're here and we're dripping with that outside top spin. And same thing, if we hit a good one, I want to get forward on it. If we don't hit a good one, we'll stay back and try again. Same thing, if the ball gets behind us, we shovel dink it and we give ourselves an opportunity to hit that drip and get forward again.
Remember, there's always a time and place for driving the ball or for hitting a traditional third shot drop. But if you can master this third shot drip, it is going to take your game miles and your partner will love you so much and you're going to love yourself. So, get a basket, get a buddy, go drill the drip until you've got it down pat. And the pros are making 96% of their drops. I don't expect that to be where you're at right now. But I do want to increase your percentage of making third shots, and I also want to be more aggressive at the same time.
Thanks for watching this video, team. I hope you got a tremendous amount of value on this third shot new age pickle ball drip. I'm making so much new content like this, so please smash that subscribe button. Um, share. I also have a full-length masterclass pickle ball course coming out from beginning to advance. So, click that link down below. Sign up so I can send you notifications as that course is about to launch so soon. All these tips compiled into one specifically geared for you. I'll see you guys in the next video. Thank you.